1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a telecommunication management system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A telecommunication management system is described in the "M30-M3000" series of Recommendations of the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union--Telecommunication).
A telecommunication management system, or a telecommunication management network, enables the operator of a telecommunication network providing telecommunication services to users to implement management services relating to that network which, for the most part, consist either in obtaining information from that network (i.e., information relating to the services provided (for billing purposes, for example), the grade of service (waiting times, faults or failures, for example), the conditions under which these services are provided (statistics of all kinds)), or in inputting information into that network (i.e., information relating to the configuration of the telecommunication network and its equipment, to the services provided and their mode of use, etc.)
The structure of the telecommunication management system is based on the use of management centers providing these management services and which must communicate in both directions with telecommunication network elements of the telecommunication network. To be more precise, one or more management centers (also called operations systems (OS)) must communicate with various telecommunication network elements (NE). Each OS provides one or more management services, each of which is implemented by a management "application".
To this end, the telecommunication management system comprises a management data switching network separate from the telecommunication network to be managed, to which the various OS and the various NE are connected and which is responsible for routing management messages supporting the required communications between OS and NE. Additionally, in order to enable communication between OS and NE from different sources, the ITU-T is currently standardizing an interface for communication between OS and NE known as the Q3 interface.
The problem to which the present invention is addressed originates from the large number of different types of OS and NE in large modern telecommunication networks.
Because of the increased range of services offered, among other things, the management requirements of the operators are increasing at a considerable rate, which tends to increase the number of OS, even if each OS supports a plurality of management applications. Moreover, the larger the telecommunication network, the more varied the types of equipment that it incorporates (i.e., different manufacturers, different generations of equipment, different equipments with dedicated technical functions, etc).
The centralized solution just outlined implies that each OS identifies the many NE's individually and knows the details of each of them. It also implies that each NE knows the many management services, identifies an OS supporting each of those services and also knows its details. As a result, a considerable volume of information is required and has to be managed in the OS and in the NE. Also, each OS must satisfy the demands of all the NE, and each NE must satisfy the demands of all the OS, where the exchange of management information is concerned, which increases the number of management messages to be transmitted by both.
Moreover, the telecommunication network is continuously evolving and management operations are continually being added thereto. This leads to a requirement for frequent updating on the information relating to the telecommunication management network both in the OS and in the NE.
It is clear that such updates are costly, both in terms of the resources required to implement them and in terms of the load that they impose on the NE. It is important to restrict and to simplify updates.
For this reason, a telecommunication management system has been proposed incorporating, like the signalling transmission network incorporated in modern telecommunication networks, a management message transfer point with which the OS and the NE communicate in their own specific manner and which handles the necessary conversions. As a result, the OS and the NE no longer need to know each other's details. The management message transfer point is also responsible for routing messages and for making multiple copies of them in the case of messages having more than one destination. In this way a system of this kind takes centralized and more economic control over all the complex aspects that have represented a considerable load on the OS and the NE, as previously mentioned. In a large network, however, this leads to a large and costly management message transfer point.
The present invention is aimed at coping with such situations and to enabling centralized management of a large telecommunication network in a manner that further simplifies a management message transfer point of this kind.